Birding With Merlin

It's always nice when I can go birding with my husband (MH) or with friends. The more eyes and ears to find and identify the birds, the better.

But what if the friend coming along isn't human?

Merlin home screen (Margo D. Beller)

So it was that MH and I recently traveled with the free Merlin app, provided by the birding experts at Cornell University's Ornithology Lab.

Merlin is the name of a falcon, halfway in size between the small American kestrel and the larger peregrine falcon. It is also one of the names, depending on whose legend you're reading, given to the wizard who tutored the boy who became King Arthur. To many birders, Merlin is a rather magical tool.

For me, not so much. 

I had resisted downloading this app ever since it was introduced in 2014. For decades I have gone out into the field with my binoculars, looked at a bird and then identified it after pouring over my many reference books. Or, more often, I listen to a call, try to find the bird, make a note of the pattern and then use one of my CDs of bird songs to identify it.

In the two decades or so I've been indulging in this lunacy I think I've done pretty well. Certainly my friends seem to think I'm an expert.

However, when MH and I did our annual spring day trip to Old Mine Road, a road in the northwestern corner of New Jersey that runs from Worthington State Forest into the federal Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, I found myself more overwhelmed than usual by the sheer number of breeding birds that come here in May and sing their territorial songs while setting up housekeeping. 

This has been especially true with warblers. There are many whose call I've heard very often so the bird is easy to identify: the "sweet-sweet-I'm-so-sweet" of the yellow, the "teaCHUR, teaCHUR" of the ovenbird, the "witchety-witchety" of the common yellow-throat. 

Merlin list of birds it heard (Margo D. Beller)

However, there are 35 types of warblers that pass through New Jersey each Spring and Fall, and many I rarely see, much less hear, so I am not as good identifying them. The magnolia, the Cape May or the bay-breasted warblers, for instance, have high, thin calls that are very tough for me to hear.

So after reading enough reports of birds that I could've identified had I heard them or knew what they were, I downloaded the app to help me. The first time I used it, at one of my favorite birding places, the Great Swamp, MH was so impressed he downloaded it, too.

Merlin has two identification features: a microphone for recording songs and a camera for taking a picture of a bird. I have not used the camera. As for the microphone, the app plainly states the microphone is most effective if you are standing in a quiet area near the bird you are trying to identify.

This is not what I have been doing.

Much of the time I've used it the phone was in a pocket as I walked. When I'd stop to check the phone Merlin would either show me a list of birds it "heard" or I'd find the app had closed because something rubbed against the touchscreen the wrong way. It is extremely difficult for me to hold the phone in one hand, a walking stick in the other and then want to quickly use the binoculars to see something moving. Especially on a rocky hillside. Going down.

If I hear something unusual, however, I stop (in a safe place), hold the phone and see what pops up. After using this app 10 or so times in very different birding locations, here is what I've learned:

There are times I can hear and identify a bird before Merlin. 

There are times Merlin hears a bird call I don't hear (which prompts me to try listening really, really hard. Half the time I still don't hear it).

There are times Merlin hears a bird call I don't hear until later in my walk and at another location. 

There are times Merlin makes a mistake, such as the catbird it identified as a red-eyed vireo and the yodeling female wood duck (which I later saw) identified as a killdeer.

There are times Merlin does not hear at all the sound I'm hearing.

Birders I've consulted on Facebook have been unanimous in saying Merlin is a less-than-perfect tool, and they never, EVER, report the birds the app "hears" and they don't. Rely on your experience, is their thinking. I agree. 

Merlin has its uses, just as the cellphone has its uses. The trick is knowing when to shut them off and go on with your life (or your birding).